Connect With SWAT

Posts Tagged ‘radon alabama’

Radon Gas Mitigation for Birmingham, Alabama Residents

Homes located in Birmingham, Alabama have a higher risk of radon gas contamination than those residences located in other areas of the country. If radon gas has entered your home, you need to implement radon gas mitigation strategies to remove it.

What is Radon Gas?

Odorless, colorless, tasteless, and dangerous – these are the words that describe radon gas. It is an invisible gas that seeps up from the ground to enter your home, where it creates the real risk of developing a form of lung cancer. Radon gas exposure can cause non-small cell lung cancer, a treatable but potentially deadly form of this disease.

Where does this carcinogen come from and how does it enter your residence? Radon gas forms beneath the earth’s surface when uranium undergoes a natural decaying process. As it builds up in volume, this carcinogenic gas begins to travel along fissures and cracks in the ground, searching for ways to escape its confinement. Eventually, this radioactive gas finds its way into a home through holes or cracks in the foundation or walls.

The radon gas continues to enter your home, building up in volume. As it does so, it also begins to break down, forming tiny atoms known as radon daughters. Anyone living in your home can inhale the existing radon, placing them at risk of developing lung cancer. The best way to determine whether or not your home is contaminated with this carcinogen is to have it tested.

Radon Gas Testing for Alabama Residents

Radon gas testing can be arranged for a short time frame or it can take place over several months. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends that residents have their homes tested at least twice a year since radon levels vary depending on weather and ground conditions. At the very least, your home should be tested once each year if you live in the Alabama area.

If you want your home tested by a professional, contact SWAT Environmental radon specialists to do so. Radon gas testing is accomplished using either active (require a source of power) or passive devices (do not require a source of power). Common types of radon gas detectors include active devices, charcoal canisters, alpha-track detectors, and charcoal liquid scintillation devices.

Radon Gas Mitigation and Birmingham, Alabama Residents

The EPA recommends that homes in the Birmingham, Alabama area that have levels of toxicity exceeding 4 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) arrange for radon gas mitigation. Currently, more than 20,000 people are expected to die each year from lung cancer caused by radon gas exposure. Eliminating this carcinogen through radon gas mitigation is the best strategy you have to prevent anyone in your home from developing non-small cell lung cancer. Radon gas mitigation is accomplished in several different ways, all of which strive to eliminate this gas from your home’s interior.